It is also known as noir de carbone and lampblack. Lampblack is, however, is not "carbon black", as it is created from a different process: the sooty burning of liquid hydrocarbons, such as kerosene. Varieties include acetylene black, channel black, furnace black, and thermal black, and these vary by the exact process used in their manufacture, and subsequently have differences in their particle size, structure, etc.

http://www.ccohs.ca/oshanswers/chemicals/chem_profiles/carbonbl/basic_cb.html has this to say about its uses (links added for convenience):

The process for its manufacture was invented by J. K. Wright, a Philadelphia ink maker, in 1864, though it wasn't mass produced until the 20th century with more advanced technology making it profitable. Because of its many oil fields, Texas lead the nation for many years in carbon black production, peaking in 1973 with 1,511,127,000 pounds (686,876,000 kilograms), valued at $128,144,000. World supply is now dominated by three companies: Cabot Corp., Degussa AG and Columbian Carbon (Part of Phelps Dodge).

According to a fine table on the brochure located here on the Columbian Carbon website http://www.columbianchemicals.com/Markets_Applications/IndustrialCarbonBlack/, these properties of carbon black have these effects (my annotations in parentheses):